Internet pornography warping teens attitudes towards women and sex

Posted by Caitlin Roper4282sc on June 04, 2015

Over the last few weeks, there have been various news media articles documenting the harmful impacts of pornography on young people.

As pornography has become the primary form of sex education for young people, young men describe addiction to explicit internet pornography and warped attitudes towards women. Girls face physical damage to their bodies from performing porn-inspired sex acts that their male partners expect, as well as pressure to perform unwanted sex acts (sometimes, live on the internet.)

Experts say teenage girls are copying what they see in pornography and seeking treatment from family doctors for injuries sustained during “rough sex”. They believe it’s part of the dark side of the sexualisation of the internet generation.

Allison Pearson, a columnist for The Telegraph in London, wrote earlier this year that young women are engaging in sex that their bodies are “simply not designed for”.

She said a GP she spoke with confessed a growing number of teenage girls were being treated for internal injuries caused by frequent anal sex “not because (they) wanted to, or because (they) enjoyed it — on the contrary — because a boy expected (them) to”.

A young woman stands in a room with several men around her. She tells the men that she is taking women's studies at university. They respond by grabbing her throat to silence her. They move onto slapping her and pulling off her clothes.

The scene that follows is too graphic to recount. After the men finish, they ask her: "What do you think of feminism now?"

The woman in this film later stated she was not comfortable with what happened. Apparently, though, this was not sexual assault but a form of sexual expression - pornography. Read more on ABC Religion and Ethics here.

‘It also had an incredibly derogatory impact on the way I viewed every member of the opposite sex. Porn not only destroyed my peace of mind. It stopped me seeing women as human beings.’

However, there was already a price to be paid — and not just for Jonny. Even before he’d dated his first girlfriend, porn was colouring his view of women. ‘Porn had an incredibly damaging impact on the way I viewed girls because the videos portrayed them as objects whose role was to be used and dominated by men. After I lost my virginity at 16, I compared every girl I slept with to those I’d seen on screen. I’d make fun of them with my friends if their bodies did not live up to my high ideals.’

When he went to university, Jonny had even more freedom to indulge his habit, and began looking at porn up to four times a day. Yet the girls who fell for his fresh-faced looks had no idea how much porn affected the way he treated them.

‘Sex to me was never about intimacy or affection. I saw it as the opportunity to play out what I had seen on screen,’ he says. ‘I was controlling. I would get the girls to do the things that turned me on visually. It was all about my pleasure, not theirs.’ Read more at Daily Mail here.

Rachel is a bright, pretty 17-year-old who wants to study medicine. she has lots of friends and when they can slip or charm their way past the watchful bouncers of London’s bars, they like to drink cocktails and enjoy being nearly grown up. She gets on with her parents and younger brother, walks her dog every night and her teachers praise her.

Once a week, usually Sunday night, she performs solo sex acts on camera for a man she has never met called David. After talking to her online for about three months, David persuaded Rachel to start what she calls ‘the sex stuff’. He now has enough ‘sex stuff’ of Rachel on tape that she feels she can neither break contact with him nor stop doing what he asks of her.

Michael has just turned 16. He has been watching hardcore pornography since he was 11 on either the laptop or the iPhone that his parents bought him. He has, by his own admission, seen ‘every sex act known to man’ in his pornography-viewing career, though he is yet to have sex. He doesn’t see much wrong with watching porn but he does admit to being unable to stop, despite ‘sometimes trying to’. Read more at Daily Mail here.

You can defend their right to childhood

Everyday our young people are exposed to more brands continuing to sexualise girls and objectify women. You can bring change to this sexploitation, stop companies from degrading women and prevent its devastating effects on young people.